Just picked up Dragonborn and I wanted to start a new character and now I'm unable to absorb the soul of the dragon at the Guard Tower at the beginning of the game which makes it impossible to continue the main quest. I read that the unofficial patches were possibily to blame so I unsub'd to them and I still can't absorb. Any ideas how to fix this?

Just picked up Dragonborn and I wanted to start a new character and now I'm unable to absorb the soul of the dragon at the Guard Tower at the beginning of the game which makes it impossible to continue the main quest. I read that the unofficial patches were possibily to blame so I unsub'd to them and I still can't absorb. Any ideas how to fix this?

You'll have to deactivate them in the launcher > Data Files. Or keep them and add the Unofficial Dragonborn Patch.

I'd recommend keeping the Unofficial patches unless you are starting a new game or loading a save prior to their install. Otherwise you will probably end up with corrupt saves someplace down the line.

EDIT: A few other mods also create this issue. Their names escape me at the moment.

The Dragonborn DLC does not have a dragon soul problem by default. It works fine, if you find you need a fix, I would suggest the fix is fixing the damage the Unofficial patch did to your saved game rather than fixing any real issue in the Dragonborn DLC.

The problem is with an old version of the "Unofficial Skyrim Patch". I was running version 1.0, but there was a later version that for some inexplicable reason wasn't being automatically updated. I manually updated to version 1.2.7 and the dragon soul issue was gone!

The Dragonborn DLC does not have a dragon soul problem by default. It works fine, if you find you need a fix, I would suggest the fix is fixing the damage the Unofficial patch did to your saved game rather than fixing any real issue in the Dragonborn DLC.

The Dragonborn DLC does not have a dragon soul problem by default. It works fine, if you find you need a fix, I would suggest the fix is fixing the damage the Unofficial patch did to your saved game rather than fixing any real issue in the Dragonborn DLC.

^^^^^^^THIS TIMES 9000!!!!

You are both wrong. Bethesda would rather use the "free" talent available than fix their damn bugs!. This is why there are "unofficial" patches. Unfortunately, the fixes can also introduce problems that should have been fixed in the first place by Bethesda.

The problem is with the DragonActorScript. USKP fixes (absorbing souls from respawned dragons at word walls) were conflicting with the new DragonActorScript introduced by Dragonborn. The Unofficial Dragonborn Patch simply includes a copy of the Dragonborn script to supersede the USKP in load order. It's a temporary fix that voids the fixes supplied by USKP until Bethesda releases the source.

Install both the Unofficial Skyrim and DB patches, and make sure the DB patch loads after the Skyrim patch. This is important, for if the Skyrim patch loads afterwards, the DB patch won't be able to fix the Skyrim patch's faults.

That ought to solve all the problems, as the Skyrim patch breaks dragon soul absorption with DB, and the DB patch fixes the Skyrim patch's problem.